


Her Mother's Daughter

by tryslora



Series: All Our Yesterdays [14]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Banshees, Community: fullmoon_ficlet, Divorce, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 13:16:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/992427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles’s daughter is understandably angry about being kept in the dark, especially now that it’s too late to really DO anything about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Mother's Daughter

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for prompt #38 - Late at fullmoon_ficlet on Livejournal. It worked perfectly into what needed to be next! As always, I do not own the characters or world of Teen Wolf, I just like to play with them.

By the time Stiles gets to the address Jackson texted to him, Jackson and Nikki are sitting on the step outside, with her curled against his side. Stiles stops short as he gets out of his car and stares, starkly reminded of Lydia in some of her darker moments.

Nikki’s hair is slightly frizzed, and her cheeks are red and blotchy. Stiles almost laughs when he thinks _she’s still beautiful when she cries_ but he keeps the edge of hysteria away. He had hardly paid any attention to the details of what Jackson said, just that Nikki had screamed. She’d started screaming and couldn’t stop, and she didn’t know why.

Stiles meets Jackson’s gaze over the top of Nikki’s head; Jackson nods slightly, and Stiles offers a rueful smile as he walks to meet them.

“Hey…”

“I’m okay,” Nikki says quickly, her voice rough and hoarse. “I just… I don’t know what happened. It’s not like I was sitting there thinking, hey, I should scream. I was actually thinking that maybe blue would be a better color to paint my room rather than green. Well, and that it’s frustrating that the two of you keep arguing over everything except telling me things.”

“Then you started screaming.” Stiles crouches to bring himself down to where they are. He nudges her hair back from her face, careful and gentle. “Nik…”

“I haven’t told her,” Jackson says quietly, and Stiles flashes him a grateful smile that fades when Jackson keeps speaking. “That doesn’t mean I agree with your decision. You made that choice, for whatever reason, but now it’s _too late_. Something happened, and Nikki needs to know what she is, because it’s the only way she’s going to be able to deal with it.”

“Wait, is this about…” Nikki looks up, stopping when Stiles interrupts her.

“I wanted her to have a childhood,” Stiles says, and he still firmly believes it. “We had no proof that she was going to be…”

“WHAT?” Nikki pushes to her feet, hands on her hips, glaring down at both of them. “Stop it with the secrets. This is _bullshit_.” She holds up one finger when Stiles opens his mouth. “No. _No_. This is my time to talk and this is my life and you keep _secrets_ from me and oh sure, it’s okay that Caleb’s a…” She waves her fingers rather than say _werewolf_ in public. “But you keep hiding something from me. And you don’t talk about my mom or my biological father and it’s not like I’m going to suddenly want them more than you. _Either_ of you. I just… it’s not _fair_.”

“I didn’t want you to be a banshee,” Stiles says quietly, because this is entirely out of his control now. “I didn’t want you to have to deal with things the way we did. Jackson _missed_ most of it, because he was gone for two years. He missed the hell Lydia went through, and she didn’t tell him even half of it, because she didn’t want him to think she was hurting without him. She was so fiercely independent and she was pretty much amazing, but this hurt her, and we were hoping it ended with her. That you wouldn’t be one too.”

“ _We_ meaning you and Papa, or _we_ meaning you and Scott?” Nikki frowns.

“This wasn’t my decision,” Jackson says dryly.

“ _We_ meaning me and Lydia.” Stiles speaks slowly, hands clenched as he stands and tries to hide the fact that he’s starting to shake. “Your mother.”

“Who is _dead_ ,” Nikki points out.

“It turns out death is relative when you’re a supernatural being.” Stiles spreads his hands. “She’s been around for a while. It just took me some time to figure out how to see her.”

Nikki blinks, and she digs her phone out of her pocket, furiously tapping at the screen. “Caleb’s going to come get me,” she mutters. “He doesn’t know this yet, but he _is_ and I am going to go over to the McCalls and I do _not_ want to see any of you. I don’t even want to see _them_ because they know, don’t they? Why didn’t someone _tell_ me this? What does it even _mean_?” She throws her hands up. “No. No. I don’t want to know any more. Just… just leave me alone, okay? Just, go show Dad the apartment or something and argue somewhere I can’t see you and _leave me alone_.”

She stalks off and Stiles stands there, staring after her. His hands hang at his sides, shaking, fingers moving as he tries to breathe through the familiarity of panic stealing over him. He has no reason to go under, not now, not really, but he can’t help it. He can feel things shattering around him until Jackson’s hand curls around his and pulls him back down to earth.

Stiles holds on hard, keeps himself anchored, and slowly finds the way to breathe again.

“She’ll be fine,” Jackson says quietly. “Caleb’s a good kid. But she’s right… you all lied to her.”

“So did you.”

“I wasn’t here, and with everything else going on when I cam back, I couldn’t exactly tell her what you didn’t. What would that have said about us?”

Jackson has a point. Stiles hates it, but Jackson definitely has a point. Stiles pushes at his hair, threading his fingers through it in frustration. He hasn’t let go of Jackson yet, but the anchor point feels good. “I fucked up,” he mutters.

“And now it’s too late,” Jackson says quietly. “How did Lydia learn to use it, to predict when someone was going to die, rather than just screaming after the fact?”

Because Jackson only ever saw the aftermath, returning after Lydia had it under control like everything else she did. Stiles draws in a deep breath and admits, “I don’t know. I’m not sure she really knows.” In his pocket, his phone beeps, and he pulls it out to look. A soft hiss. “Fuck. It’s Mallory Bennett.”

“Who?”

Stiles looks at Jackson and shows him the text from Scott. “Mallory Bennett is a girl in Nikki’s class. She was found in the preserve, her throat ripped out. Animal attack. That’s who Nik was screaming for.”

All because Stiles waited, and tried to keep Nikki innocent. It’s all starting again, and for Mallory, it’s just too late.


End file.
